Episode 3 Landward

Hello and a very warm welcome to a special Landward, in a series of

BBC programmes marking the centenary of the start of World War I.

In this programme we'll be focusing on how the Scottish countryside

changed as result of the war, from here in the Howe of the Mearns.

We've come to the Mearns, just south of Aberdeen, as it's

the setting for Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel, Sunset Song,

often voted the nation's favourite book.

It tells the story of a north-east farming

community during World War I, charting the dramatic

changes to the people and the landscape during these years.

Changes felt across all of rural Scotland.

Also on the programme...

The role of the Scottish gamekeeper on the front line.

These chaps opened sights, no telescopes, at 600 yards.

It takes a bit of doing, that.

Sarah will be finding out how the war was nearly lost

when we almost ran out of trees.

And Euan experiences the pulling power of Scotland's horses

-sent to the front line.

-Windsor, walk on, walk on, Windsor.

What a good boy, what a good boy.

MUSIC

From remote glens...

..to village squares,

wherever you go in Scotland you will find a war memorial.

Such was the loss of men by the time the First World War had

finished in 1918, nearly every community in Scotland decided

to erect a monument to their own war dead.

This is Auchenblae war memorial,

sited on a vantage point above the parish of Fordoun in the Mearns

and it was in small rural

communities like this that the loss of young men was particularly felt.

Among the 29 names inscribed on this memorial are those of brothers

William and Duncan Harper.

They are just two of the many thousands of young

men from rural communities who went to fight in the Great War.

There are no remaining photographs of the brothers or their family.

Just two names on a war memorial.

These boys came from humble beginnings.

Their father was an agricultural labourer.

For them, as for many others, the Army offered an escape.

The younger, Duncan, joined the local regiment,

the Gordon Highlanders,

then transferred to the Machine Gun Corps.

His older brother William joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

and both were sent out to France.

On 1 July 1916, aged just 21,

Duncan was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The single worst day of losses the British Army has ever seen,

with 60,000 casualties and 20,000 dead.

His brother William was killed just two weeks later, also at the Somme.

I've come to Fettercairn, the next village along,

where I'm told the Harper brothers' names appear on a gravestone.

I've just got to find it.

With no known graves, both brothers are named on the Thiepval Memorial

in France, but they're also remembered on a family stone.

This is the stone I'm looking for.

This is William and Duncan Harper's grandparents' gravestone.

Pretty hard to see, I know. It's weathered, but if you look at

this you really get the sense of the extent of losses felt in this area.

Duncan Harper is there, William, his brother is there.

But if you look below there are four other Harpers, all in their 20s,

all killed between 1916 and 1917. Six members of one family.

At the top it says mortui pro patria.

Died for their country.

This tragedy was repeated all over Scotland, where brothers

and friends fell in their thousands, leaving communities devastated.

Some areas never recovered from the loss of men.

Among them is the Cabrach, a bleak,

hilly moorland covering 50 square miles of north-east Scotland.

Before the war the Cabrach had a population of several thousand people.

I'm meeting journalist and author Norman Harper,

who has charted the impact of war and winter on this remote landscape.

All the fighting age men and boys here believed what politicians

and newspaper editors were telling them.

More than 800 men and boys went off to war within the first four weeks.

I reckon it's about 90%. I mean, you look at it now,

-you would think they could barely muster 80, but 800.

-Yes.

It's a tremendous thing for a wee community like this to send to war.

MUSIC

But of the men and boys who had left so willingly,

many would never come home.

Those who were left behind had their own battle with the elements.

'The women and children and old folk more or less survived

'the winter of 1914-15 because it was unseasonably mild.

'But after a year of trying to survive they hit the winter of '15-16

'and it was a classic Cabrach winter. Drifts,'

blizzards, blocked in for weeks on end, animals dying.

So really they had to make a decision that was forced on them.

It was the only decision they could make.

They went to look for accommodation

in the surrounding towns and villages,

Dufftown, Huntly, Rhynie, Lumsden and they abandoned the crofts.

MUSIC

100 years on, mile upon mile of this empty landscape scattered

with tumble-down crofts and farms.

A whole community abandoned.

The buildings are a poignant

reminder of the price this area paid for World War I.

Everybody thinks war wreaks its worst damage on urban areas

but rural Scotland played a huge part too,

you just need to look around here to see that.

Glasgow is still Glasgow, Edinburgh is still Edinburgh,

Aberdeen is still Aberdeen.

But the Cabrach is nothing like it was 100 years ago

and nor will it ever be again.

In just a few short years, the once vibrant crofting community of the Cabrach was empty.

The people never came back.

30 years ago I interviewed a Dutch academic historian,

who was researching the effects of war on home fronts

in various countries and he said, you know, in Scotland you are living with

the biggest war memorial in Europe, specifically the Cabrach.

No-one knows the exact figures for Scotland's war dead,

the estimates range from a low of 80,000 to a high of 147,000.

But whatever the figures, the losses were enough to have a deep

and long-lasting impact.

It wasn't only crofters and labourers who were sought by the Army,

it was one group of men with unique skills that could be readily

deployed on the Western front.

Gamekeepers.

They were wanted for their stalking and shooting skills

and were recruited from Scottish estates.

When war broke out, it soon became clear that it was going to be

fought and won in the trenches, and the army would need expert shots.

So they looked to gamekeepers.

This is Invercauld estate near Braemar where I am going to find out

more from a retired gamekeeper, Peter Fraser.

They were first-class shots, all were experienced handling rifles.

What type of weapon did they use?

It was a Lee Enfield 303, a good sturdy rifle, it was.

It had a ten shot magazine, and it was accurate to about 600 yards.

-600 yards?

-600 yards, yes.

-So what is that, a 30th of a mile?

-That is correct.

-A huge range.

-A long range.

When you think today we are using telescopes

and basically we are shooting maybe between 100 and 200 yards,

these chaps, open sights, no telescopes at 600 yards.

It takes a bit of doing.

In 1916, gamekeepers, Gillies and stalkers are brought together

in the regiment known as the Lovat Scouts.

They were the British Army's first sniper unit,

they were called the Sharpshooters.

Part of a stalker's main job is spying, locating deer

and then using ground cover to get in as close as they can.

And Lord Lovat thought that the men from the Highlands would be

well equipped to do that.

He was a stalker himself

and knew exactly how capable they were at doing that.

The Sharpshooters were highly valued for their skills

in reconnaissance, able to get close to German positions

and gather intelligence on the numbers and movements of the enemy.

In other regiments, the age of conscription was between 19 and 41.

But Lovat's regiment was made up of men who had honed their skills

over many years stalking on the hills and moors and they were much older.

The youngest was 42 and the oldest was 62.

That's quite old for active service.

-For that time it was a fair age, wasn't it?

-A fair age, it was.

And very remarkable, I would have said.

But while the men were away, their absence was felt in the countryside.

Highland sporting estates were neglected.

There was no heather burning, no deer management, no vermin control.

Estates ran into financial difficulty,

and in the years after the war many had been broken up and sold.

As a result, the number of gamekeepers employed fell dramatically.

Now Euan is at Strathorn farm in Aberdeenshire where he is

finding out was not only men who were called up for the war effort.

Just as Scotland's land and estate were emptied of men,

horses were also in huge demand.

Last week we saw the modern show Clydesdale but at the time of

the First World War, farms depended heavily on horse power and the

requisitioning of farm horses to become warhorses was deeply felt.

George Skinner runs Strathorn farm stables,

which specialises in Clydesdale horses.

A fantastic beastie, isn't he?

You are going to be in charge of this horse. You need a licence anyway.

-Watch he doesn't step on your toes.

-OK. You'll tack him up?

I am going to tack him up, and put on a harness.

-You hold him there, that's perfect.

-I will hold on tight.

So this is what traditionally they would have worn for war?

The collar must go on upside down so the wide part gets over

-the horse's eyes, you see.

-Why were Clydesdales so important?

Why this breed? Why were they used on the farm?

The Clydesdale was the motive power, in the farms at that time.

-Because there was no machinery.

-What kind of work would they be doing?

They were... Most of them were ploughing, that was their main job,

and they did a lot of work transporting, with boxcarts, stepcarts and woodcarts.

And also harvest carts.

A 100-acre farm would tend to have a pair of horses

and has you went on to the bigger farms there was maybe three horsemen

and they had a pair of horses and that pair belonged to the farmer,

but the horsemen were very proud of their pair of horses.

At their height there were 140,000 Clydesdales

working on Scottish farms.

But then, in 1914, it all changed.

When war broke out there was a shortage of horses

in the British Army, so the War Office

and the urgent task of sourcing half a million more.

Each district had a remount officer who kept house on the local

horse population and requisitioned suitable horses for the Army.

The horses were used for mounting cavalry charges

but they were vital in transporting ammunition

and supplies as well as taking dying or injured men back to hospital.

But the Clydesdale in particular was well-suited for one particular job.

They were used for transporting guns,

which have similar wheels to a boxcart.

How heavy a weight can the horse pull?

-A ton.

-A ton?

-A ton was the load on the boxcart.

About 25% of the weight was on the horse's back,

and the rest was carried by the wheels.

-So they would have been perfect for pulling guns?

-Absolutely.

-So that's us. We're all tacked up and ready to go.

-Yes, ready to go.

I am taking a ride to get a sense of the power of the Clydesdale,

that made it so useful in the war effort.

This isn't a good look!

So does this thing actually move or is it static?

With a little luck I think we will get going. Windsor, walk on!

Walk on, Windsor! Very good boy. Very good boy.

So would there be trained horseman out there?

The farm guys come off the farm, would that have been their job?

A certain number of them would have been people... Workers who worked on the farms.

And went out to join the Army,

and went out and looked after the horses in the First World War.

Nae doubt about that, like.

By 1917, over one million horses and mules had been shipped off into

military service and the terrible slaughter of the Western front.

More than a quarter of these were lost, the exact figure isn't known.

At the end of the war, only a lucky few returned,

most were sold to French abattoirs or horse traders,

because the Army couldn't afford to ship them back.

Back in Scotland,

farms which had depended on horse power were finding alternative methods.

That, presumably, led to the mechanisation of the farms?

It was the beginning of the start of the mechanisation in farms,

it was just after the First World War.

But it was very, very early days.

Can you make this go any smoother? It's a bit bumpy.

Nah, there's nothing we can do about it, like.

The war emptied the countryside of all

kinds of breeds of horses, but the loss of the Clydesdale led to the

mechanisation of farms and the move to larger scale farm units.

It's worthwhile considering what these gentle giants endured during World War I.

From Aberdeenshire across the Cairngorms to Glenmore Forest,

where Sarah's finding out about the impact of the war on our native woodlands.

As agricultural areas were emptied of the male workforce,

some parts of Scotland's countryside saw a sudden influx of workers.

The demand for timber during World War I brought a whole new

industry into Scotland's forests.

At the front, the Army walked on timber

and underground props were needed for hundreds of miles of trenches.

From huts to ammunition boxes to bridges.

The First World War devoured more timber than any other war in history.

And all this wood had to come from somewhere.

I'm meeting up with environmental historian

Mary Stuart on the shores of Loch Morlich in Glenmore

to discover what this meant for Scotland.

When war broke out timber was largely sourced from abroad,

from particularly the Baltic countries,

Russia, Finland, Scandinavia, and also North America.

Particularly Canada.

But it was quickly realised during the first year of the war

the shipping was going to have to be used frugally to

bring in other supplies such as munitions, such as food.

And timber being very bulky was regarded as something that should be home-grown.

In 1914, 5% of Scotland was covered with forests,

most of it native woodland.

But with demand for timber on the Western Front rocketing

and imports from abroad cut off, the British government had to turn

to woodlands and forests at home.

A recruitment campaign was launched to draft workers into the forests.

The government put out a plea to the Canadian government to

provide lumberjacks, lumbermen, saw millers, to come over.

As a military army battalion.

If you look at Glenmore, it is quite wild, and in those days very, very remote.

First of all they had to build their own camps,

they then had to put in place all of the infrastructure to be able

to access the timber, so they had to put in railways,

build their sawmills and their sawmills were substantial.

The industry in Canada was much, much more sophisticated

than ours, so they were asked to bring their own equipment.

But, yes, these 200 lumberjacks that came to Glenmore

were going out every day in weather that they really didn't like

and they were felling by axe and by saw.

Between 1916 and 1918, over 100,000 trees were felled here at Glenmore.

Just one of the many camps across the Scottish Highlands.

By the time the war ended, Scotland's native forests were all but gone.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George admitted that the war had

almost been lost because we were so close to running out of timber.

This led to the creation of the Forestry Commission in 1919.

Glenmore Forest was one of the first areas to be

replanted by the new commission.

100 years since the outbreak of war,

trees now cover over one quarter of the Scottish landscape.

Far more forestry than we had in 1914.

From forestry to farming,

where during the war food production became critical.

At the start of the war Britain produced 35% of its own food,

with a heavy reliance on imports by ship.

But when Germany began its naval blockade the country faced

a serious food shortage.

Alarmed at the success of the German U-boats, the government was

keen to promote an increase in the growing of crops.

Many acres were turned over from meat production to growing wheat -

the farmland of Scotland would be changed for ever.

I'm meeting Dr Billy Kenefick from Dundee University.

We're in Aberknight.

This Tayside parish is a fairly typical Scottish farming community.

By 1915, Aberknight was seeing the impact of changes to farming

driven by the need to produce food for the masses.

The whole way farming happened here would have changed.

Basically the arable crops were intended mostly for animals,

you can see that, the amount of pasture land, grassland that there was.

They go away from meat

and they want farmers to produce food for the people.

Not to feed animals.

This didn't just happen in Aberknight, it happened all over the country.

In Scotland, an extra quarter of a million acres were brought

under the plough by the end of the war, and that's a huge amount of land.

The effort required to turn these fields into ploughed fields must have been massive.

You'd have thought that with all of the men

going off to war there would have been a huge shortage of labour.

That was the case in England but not in Scotland?

No, in Scotland the situation was very different.

-We had an army of women working the land in Scotland.

-Already?

-Yes, absolutely. Probably around 20, 21,000.

-What about the children?

-Were the part of that labour force?

-They were always part of it.

When it came to cultivation or harvest time,

the women and the children would have been very much involved.

These were families who were working on the land,

just not the man working on the land.

Yes, basically we're talking about maybe 20,000 men leaving.

What about the skilled jobs like ploughing, though,

presumably you can suddenly get that?

There must have been skilled men at the front and in the war,

did they get sent back?

There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that they tried to

hold on to the skilled men, the ploughmen in particular.

Presumably the farmers did not want them to go.

No, they were the aristocracy of labour.

With so much land now ploughed up, the crops that were grown

reflected the need to cheaply feed both the people and the horses.

This is Montgarrie Mill near Alford in Aberdeenshire,

which was at full capacity during the war years.

Oats were one of the most important cereals being processed in mills

throughout Scotland, feeding humans and animals alike.

In fact, demand was

so high for what Scotland could produce that agriculture boomed.

But it was short-lived, and the artificial boom of the war years

was followed by a major downturn.

Men returning from the front saw their jobs elsewhere.

The removal of the Corn Protection Act in 1921 opened up competition from abroad.

Cheap imports, a move to a larger scale farming and increased mechanisation -

all reasons why in the 1920s there were far fewer people

working the land than ever before in Scottish history.

World War I changed rural Scotland for ever.

Farms, communities, estates were all ripped apart by the loss

of men and the impact that had on those left behind.

In my opinion, the book that best encapsulates that whole period is this.

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

I read this for the first time just a couple of months ago.

It's a wonderful, wonderful book.

The novel is based here in the Howe of the Mearns,

an area like many others that was profoundly affected.

Its author would have witnessed these changes at first-hand.

The fictional community is called Kinraddie,

but it is closely modelled on the Parish of Arbuthnott.

I have come to the local Kirk to meet Jim Brown,

chairman of the Grassic Gibbon Centre.

Jim, how are you?

Good to see you. Welcome to Arbuthnott.

This is where the novel begins, in this church?

This is where it starts, this is

mentioned at the start of Sunset Song and the church with its history

and its fine windows would have really intrigued Grassic Gibbon.

Like all the great writers, they write about where they have been,

and the Arbuthnott is very much the country community that is all over

Scotland, be it glen or a village community, Arbuthnott is the same.

-Shall we have a wee wander, then?

-Certainly. We'll have a look at Kinraddie.

The main theme of the book is change,

seen through the eyes of the central character, Chris Guthrie.

A crofter's daughter,

torn between her love of the land and the yearning for an education.

"You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk,

"and learning was brave and fine one day.

"And the next you'd waken, with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep,

"crying in the heart of you. And the smell of the earth in your face.

"You'd cry for that. The beauty of it.

"And the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies."

Tell me, Jim, what was this community like,

this landscape like, before the First World War when the novel was set?

Certainly far more trees at that time, before then

all the small crofts, smallholdings, all tenanted land.

How would you say the war affected this area?

The countryside hadn't changed since the Victorian times, very stable.

And suddenly, the start of the war was the real catalyst for change.

I think Grassic Gibbon covers it well as a community,

because it started off with just a rumour of war,

and then first guys started to go and then a main character, Chae Strachan went,

and then he covered desertion.

He covered all aspects of the war at that time.

"Once the place had been sheltered in life,

"it poised now upon he brae, in whatever storm might come.

"The woodmen had all finished by then.

"They'd left a country that looked as though it had been

"shelled by a German army."

The First World War provides a climax, and with the end

of the war comes the sunset of a people and of a whole way of life.

The novel ends at the unveiling of a community war memorial,

with the Minister reading a dedication to the men lost.

"These were the last of the peasants, the last of the old Scots folk.

"A new generation comes up that will know them not

"except as a memory in a song.

"We are told that great machines come soon to till the land

"and the great herds come to feed in it.

"Nothing that has been said is true, but change."

It concludes with a loan piper playing Flowers Of The Forest,

an ancient Scottish song that has become the official

lament to the fallen of World War I.

PIPER PLAYS "FLOWERS OF THE FOREST"